SURVIVED PRISON HELL-HOLE
Angola's Woodfox to get new trial
By Richard Becker
San Francisco
More than a quarter of a century after being railroaded to
prison for life, former Black Panther Party activist Albert
Woodfox is scheduled for retrial on Dec. 7 in Amite, La.
Woodfox and a comrade, Herman "Hooks" Wallace, were tried
and convicted by an all-white jury for the killing of a white
guard, Brent Miller, in Louisiana's infamous Angola State
Penitentiary.
Woodfox and Wallace then spent almost two decades in
solitary confinement inside a prison that has richly earned its
reputation as one of the most brutal hell-holes in the
country.
In 1992 Woodfox won a retrial on this frame-up conviction.
But he was kept in Angola on an earlier robbery charge.
Finally released from Angola, he has been held in the
Tangipahoa parish jail in Amite, a small town with a
prison-based economy.
Wallace, who is also seeking a new trial, is still in
isolation in Angola.
Woodfox and Wallace helped found a chapter of the Black
Panther Party inside Angola prison in 1971. A wave of rebellion
was engulfing the U.S. prison system at the time-- from Attica,
N.Y., to San Quentin, Calif.
Angola penitentiary is a complex of buildings amid huge
sugarcane, cotton and soybean fields run on the slave labor of
prisoners. It became the site of the first official prison
chapter of the BPP.
An all-white prison administration, headed by notorious
Warden Murray Henderson, responded to an upsurge of prisoner
activism with extreme repression. In the years that followed,
many bodies of murdered prisoners were exhumed from the
surrounding swamps.
In April 1972, guard Miller was stabbed to death. Only one
person, inmate Hezekiah Brown, witnessed the killing. At first
Brown said he couldn't identify anyone involved because their
faces had been covered.
After several days of pressure, however, Brown changed his
story and identified four men: Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace,
Gilbert Montegut and Chester Jackson. They became known as the
Angola 4.
Montegut, a revolutionary activist like Woodfox and Wallace,
was later acquitted. Jackson turned state's evidence and
testified for the prosecution.
Years later, evidence emerged that both Hezekiah Brown and
Chester Jackson were paid off with sentence reductions and
other incentives. Documents have shown that the FBI attempted
to infiltrate Herman Wallace's defense committee.
After winning a new trial, Woodfox was indicted anew in
1993. One of the grand jurors was Anne Butler, an author and
the wife of Warden Henderson.
Butler had written a book, "Dying to Tell," about Angola
prison. The first chapter was on the death of guard Miller,
based on the state's version that Woodfox and Wallace were
guilty.
Instead of calling witnesses, the assistant district
attorney in charge of presenting the case to the grand jury
requested that Butler "explain" the case. The new indictment
was then handed up.
Judge Bruce Bennett has turned down a motion by Woodfox's
lawyers to throw the case out based on outrageous grand juror
prejudice.
The state's witnesses from the original trial have died or
disappeared. The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Julie
Cullen, has told journalists that she plans to introduce
evidence that Woodfox had spelled America "Amerikkka" and used
terminology like "racist pigs" to describe prison guards. She
hopes this will convince the jury of his guilt.
According to Dr. Gail Shaw, a supporter of Woodfox, "The
state's case is really based on putting the Black Panther Party
on trial."
Malik Rahim, an organizer of the New Orleans chapter of the
Black Panther Party in the early 1970s, is coordinating support
activities for Albert Woodfox.
"All people who support peace and justice need to come
forward to support Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace," Rahim
told Workers World. "It is a mockery of justice that these two
men have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement on
false charges. They must be freed."
Geronimo ji Jaga, who himself spent 27 years in California
prisons on frame-up charges and was released in 1997, now lives
in Morgan City, La. "They endured and survived over all these
years with very little help from the outside world," ji Jaga
said of Wallace and Woodfox. "They are the kind of unsung
heroes who we must come forward to help because they never
asked for anything from us in exchange for what they have
suffered."
Woodfox's trial is set to begin at the Pangipahoa Parish
Courthouse, Mulberry & North Bay streets, in Amite on Dec.
7. Supporters are urged to attend.
Letters of support, calling for dropping charges and freeing
Albert Woodfox, should be sent to Assistant Attorney General
Julie Cullen, Louisiana Department of Justice, PO Box 94095,
Baton Rouge, La. 70804. For more information, readers can call
the National People's Campaign at (415) 821-6545.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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